warboss wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Its funny how "That guy" only seems to exist in GW games because other miniature game systems don't allow "That guy" type lists to exist in the first place.

Come now.. don't be ridiculous. Every game has power lists, issues, etc to some extent. Some simply have more than others but a black and white T/F statement like your's is instantly recognizable as false. Plenty of people consider TIE swarm lists to be broken in x-wing and that is a very nicely balanced and elegant game. Other games like Heavy Gear have plenty of TFG lists that abuse poorly written rules. Warmachine fully embraced the cheese with its play like you've got a pair rule for years. The point is whether or not the company addresses those issues after they create them.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
In every competitive game every that has rules, there will always be those who try to bend them so far as to make the rules absurd and unfun to compete against. Thats not a rules problem, thats a player problem.

PhantomViper wrote:

 warboss wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Its funny how "That guy" only seems to exist in GW games because other miniature game systems don't allow "That guy" type lists to exist in the first place.

Come now.. don't be ridiculous. Every game has power lists, issues, etc to some extent. Some simply have more than others but a black and white T/F statement like your's is instantly recognizable as false. Plenty of people consider TIE swarm lists to be broken in x-wing and that is a very nicely balanced and elegant game. Other games like Heavy Gear have plenty of TFG lists that abuse poorly written rules. Warmachine fully embraced the cheese with its play like you've got a pair rule for years. The point is whether or not the company addresses those issues after they create them.

Do as I said then, go to any of the forums that I mentioned and see how many people accuse their fellow gamers of being "TFG" just because they take a strong list. In the occasions were blatantly unfair lists seem to exist in other games (early war pre-nerf BEF in FoW, the TIE swarm you mentioned in X-Wing, pre-nerf eGaspy lists in WMH), the players blamed the company for allowing the lists to exist, they didn't blame their fellow players for using them...

 Thud wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
In every competitive game every that has rules, there will always be those who try to bend them so far as to make the rules absurd and unfun to compete against. Thats not a rules problem, thats a player problem.

Yeah... Player problem. Like the last time I played chess against my girlfriend, and I used the Yugoslav attack. I'm such a dick.

I just love how when a company makes a wargame with clearly established procedures for determining winners and losers, players who play completely within the rules somehow end up being the bad guys.

Can GW fix the problem? Yes. Do they? No. Who do we blame? The players!

 Accolade wrote:

Spoiler:

 warboss wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
For those who rely on primary pick-up games, how often do you actually have a game against "That guy" who brings a super competitive netlist to a pickup game. And do you actually agree to play that guy?

Not sure how Unbound is any different than agreeing or not agreeing to play a cheese list, its purely optional

I don't understand why it is so hard to understand be here we go again... alot of people don't have a choice in who they play in pick up games. I frequently arrive at the store and find a single person to play against that isn't already in a game or have one prescheduled. It is a choice of playing that person or going home and wasting the 25 mile trip each way. Having the "core" rules exclude armies that are not fun to play against as standard eliminates alot of the risk in playing against the types of armies that are not fun to face. I don't care about losing but I don't want the result determined largely before I roll any dice either.

In 3rd edition (when I last faced a "competitive" crowd of any sort), no one brought an army of leman russ tanks for years. Why? Because it wasn't standard 40k and they'd have to "ask" to use it and in all likelihood they'd be rejected. When the armored lists came out and made armies of mostly AV14 tanks "legal", they appeared. Why? Because it was now standard. I played the guy once and then had to tell him I didn't want to play (along with everyone else) which ended up hurting his feelings and causing uncomfortable scenes for weeks. The same thing happened with the stupid catachan jungle fighter codex with the same guy. He wasn't a bad guy nor a power gamer and he really was a great hobbyist who painted up armies simply for variety (we even called him "army of the week" *insert name here*)... but some of the armies he chose were not fun to play against. You could ALWAYS chose to deploy 3x the normal amount of terrain in a very lopsided fashion and give one side bonuses to ignore them while the other side had to deal with it... but you had to ask first and you'd likely be told no. With the catachan jungle fighter codex, it became standard and when it did someone showed up wanting to use it. I again tried it once and it was a waste of an evening and never wanted to play it again (and others didn't even bother when they read the terrain rules).

The simple fact is that if you make it legal someone eventually will want to use it and you may have no choice but to either play against it or go home. Yes, you can always refuse to play any one for any reason but making crap unfair and unfun lists "legal" means intrisically that you're more likely to face them or waste your time. It doesn't even have to be a TFG who wants to use it (the guy above wasn't one but simply an avid hobbyist) either but I don't doubt that more than a few TFGs will take advantage of this. I want to play a large skirmish game when I go to the store and not have to potentially negotiate a 40k pre-nup before every game complete with a checklist of what we're not potentially using. As in all things opinion, YMMV.

Again, for the folks who are wondering why people are complaining, the above is obviously contigent on the exact rules regarding the use of "unbound" armies which we don't have yet. In the end, I'm defaulting to experience both in 40k in particular and tabletop gaming in general. The "screw you" nonstandard armies in 3rd edition that became "standard" weren't fun to play against in my experience. The ally rules worried me from the second I saw them (both in terms of immediate abuse as well as a portent for the future) and my fears were indeed founded and expanded upon with future non-permission additions like dataslates, escalation, etc. When I look at the blurb GW has chosen to give us regarding Unbound armies, I will default to what has actually occured both in the past and just recently instead of putting my head in the sand. I certainly hope that I'm proven wrong though and that GW hasn't prioritzed sales over any semblance of fairness and balance yet again like with allies, dataslates, and detachments... but I'm not holding my breath.

I think warboss presents a well thought-out scenario here.

The argument that it will just be TFG's bringing cheesy un-fun lists is a little too black-and-white. People playing pickup games will be facing shades of grey in terms of the unbound armies. It won't always be clear whether they are facing a facestomper or just particularly effective list. And a lot of people fielding these lists won't necessarily be looking to cream opponents, but instead will be building lists thinking "well, these guys in my list are really cool so they should have the best rules." It's a lot like crazy characters in the rules proposal forum, where people feel their own particular force is special and is worthy of better rules.

Declining these sort of games is a bit more difficult; people will want the rational for why you're not playing them, and there evolves a whole lot of back-and-forth that frankly shouldn't be necessary for playing 40k, IMO.

 Kroothawk wrote:

6th edition rulebook and starter box confirmed to be OOP in all languages.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Thud wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
In every competitive game every that has rules, there will always be those who try to bend them so far as to make the rules absurd and unfun to compete against. Thats not a rules problem, thats a player problem.

Yeah... Player problem. Like the last time I played chess against my girlfriend, and I used the Yugoslav attack. I'm such a dick.

I just love how when a company makes a wargame with clearly established procedures for determining winners and losers, players who play completely within the rules somehow end up being the bad guys.

Can GW fix the problem? Yes. Do they? No. Who do we blame? The players!

Well if shes inexperienced or not as good of a player as you, you kindof are

And yes people that take it to that extremes where the rules are bent as close to breaking, they are as well.

People letting them get away with it are the problem, and I'm glad tournaments are having rules to counter it.

But there will always be people that get around it to win

Yes the rules may not be the best, but taking that much of advantage of them to make the game unfun for everyone else doesnt make you not a problem as well

shade1313 wrote:
Yeah, it's a little sad that there'll be automatic labeling of players as TFG for bringing what are technically "unbound" lists, but really are just the only way they can, within printed rules, play their vision of a proper Biel-Tan army, for example.

Sure, there'll be superdouches who do try to bring stupid amounts of game breaking units spammed all over, but there'll also be poor sods who just want to play their list with lots of Banshees, Scorpions, etc, and as soon as they say "it's an unbound list", people will start foaming at the mouth.

shade1313 wrote:

 Accolade wrote:

Spoiler:

 warboss wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
For those who rely on primary pick-up games, how often do you actually have a game against "That guy" who brings a super competitive netlist to a pickup game. And do you actually agree to play that guy?

Not sure how Unbound is any different than agreeing or not agreeing to play a cheese list, its purely optional

I don't understand why it is so hard to understand be here we go again... alot of people don't have a choice in who they play in pick up games. I frequently arrive at the store and find a single person to play against that isn't already in a game or have one prescheduled. It is a choice of playing that person or going home and wasting the 25 mile trip each way. Having the "core" rules exclude armies that are not fun to play against as standard eliminates alot of the risk in playing against the types of armies that are not fun to face. I don't care about losing but I don't want the result determined largely before I roll any dice either.

In 3rd edition (when I last faced a "competitive" crowd of any sort), no one brought an army of leman russ tanks for years. Why? Because it wasn't standard 40k and they'd have to "ask" to use it and in all likelihood they'd be rejected. When the armored lists came out and made armies of mostly AV14 tanks "legal", they appeared. Why? Because it was now standard. I played the guy once and then had to tell him I didn't want to play (along with everyone else) which ended up hurting his feelings and causing uncomfortable scenes for weeks. The same thing happened with the stupid catachan jungle fighter codex with the same guy. He wasn't a bad guy nor a power gamer and he really was a great hobbyist who painted up armies simply for variety (we even called him "army of the week" *insert name here*)... but some of the armies he chose were not fun to play against. You could ALWAYS chose to deploy 3x the normal amount of terrain in a very lopsided fashion and give one side bonuses to ignore them while the other side had to deal with it... but you had to ask first and you'd likely be told no. With the catachan jungle fighter codex, it became standard and when it did someone showed up wanting to use it. I again tried it once and it was a waste of an evening and never wanted to play it again (and others didn't even bother when they read the terrain rules).

The simple fact is that if you make it legal someone eventually will want to use it and you may have no choice but to either play against it or go home. Yes, you can always refuse to play any one for any reason but making crap unfair and unfun lists "legal" means intrisically that you're more likely to face them or waste your time. It doesn't even have to be a TFG who wants to use it (the guy above wasn't one but simply an avid hobbyist) either but I don't doubt that more than a few TFGs will take advantage of this. I want to play a large skirmish game when I go to the store and not have to potentially negotiate a 40k pre-nup before every game complete with a checklist of what we're not potentially using. As in all things opinion, YMMV.

Again, for the folks who are wondering why people are complaining, the above is obviously contigent on the exact rules regarding the use of "unbound" armies which we don't have yet. In the end, I'm defaulting to experience both in 40k in particular and tabletop gaming in general. The "screw you" nonstandard armies in 3rd edition that became "standard" weren't fun to play against in my experience. The ally rules worried me from the second I saw them (both in terms of immediate abuse as well as a portent for the future) and my fears were indeed founded and expanded upon with future non-permission additions like dataslates, escalation, etc. When I look at the blurb GW has chosen to give us regarding Unbound armies, I will default to what has actually occured both in the past and just recently instead of putting my head in the sand. I certainly hope that I'm proven wrong though and that GW hasn't prioritzed sales over any semblance of fairness and balance yet again like with allies, dataslates, and detachments... but I'm not holding my breath.

I think warboss presents a well thought-out scenario here.

The argument that it will just be TFG's bringing cheesy un-fun lists is a little too black-and-white. People playing pickup games will be facing shades of grey in terms of the unbound armies. It won't always be clear whether they are facing a facestomper or just particularly effective list. And a lot of people fielding these lists won't necessarily be looking to cream opponents, but instead will be building lists thinking "well, these guys in my list are really cool so they should have the best rules." It's a lot like crazy characters in the rules proposal forum, where people feel their own particular force is special and is worthy of better rules.

Declining these sort of games is a bit more difficult; people will want the rational for why you're not playing them, and there evolves a whole lot of back-and-forth that frankly shouldn't be necessary for playing 40k, IMO.

Yeah, it's a little sad that there'll be automatic labeling of players as TFG for bringing what are technically "unbound" lists, but really are just the only way they can, within printed rules, play their vision of a proper Biel-Tan army, for example.

Sure, there'll be superdouches who do try to bring stupid amounts of game breaking units spammed all over, but there'll also be poor sods who just want to play their list with lots of Banshees, Scorpions, etc, and as soon as they say "it's an unbound list", people will start foaming at the mouth.

 Thud wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Thud wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
In every competitive game every that has rules, there will always be those who try to bend them so far as to make the rules absurd and unfun to compete against. Thats not a rules problem, thats a player problem.

Yeah... Player problem. Like the last time I played chess against my girlfriend, and I used the Yugoslav attack. I'm such a dick.

I just love how when a company makes a wargame with clearly established procedures for determining winners and losers, players who play completely within the rules somehow end up being the bad guys.

Can GW fix the problem? Yes. Do they? No. Who do we blame? The players!

Well if shes inexperienced or not as good of a player as you, you kindof are

And yes people that take it to that extremes where the rules are bent as close to breaking, they are as well.

People letting them get away with it are the problem, and I'm glad tournaments are having rules to counter it.

But there will always be people that get around it to win

Yes the rules may not be the best, but taking that much of advantage of them to make the game unfun for everyone else doesnt make you not a problem as well

About the chess thing, if I play poorly on purpose she'd be way more pissed than by losing to me. "Hai thar, sweetie, since you're slow in the head, I'll just condescendingly play down to your level so you might feel like you have a chance. I'm such a nice guy!" Yeah.... The couch is really uncomfortable so I'd rather not sleep there.

And as for me being the problem in 40k, that's great and all, but I'm a small group of players that all enjoy playing competitively. We like making the hardest armies we can, and crush each other, hear the lamentations of our women and all that. We're all good. But there are other guys at a local club, and there is literally no point in any of us playing against those guys. Since they're not in charge of my sleeping arrangements, I could of course pull the same condescending dickery, but playing fluffy 40k armies doesn't automatically make one slow, so they might not appreciate being condescended. "Oh, wanna play a game? Sure. Let me just make my army worse first, ya know, so you'll stand a chance. Oops, I seem to have forgotten to shoot my Riptide and then left it in charge range from your Chaos Lord. Silly me! Hey, at least now you'll kill something, eh? Wink, wink!"

The problem with an unbalanced 40k isn't that you're forced to play boring games. The problem is that an already niche group is being divided into two groups that are so far apart that interaction between the two is meaningless.

 Thud wrote:
About the chess thing, if I play poorly on purpose she'd be way more pissed than by losing to me. "Hai thar, sweetie, since you're slow in the head, I'll just condescendingly play down to your level so you might feel like you have a chance. I'm such a nice guy!" Yeah.... The couch is really uncomfortable so I'd rather not sleep there.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Rules wont fix the problems you decide, you cant make non-competitive players competitive, same as you cant make competitive players non-competitive. No rules from GW can ever fix that mentality or that rift between those two groups.

Rules wont fix the problems you decide, you cant make non-competitive players competitive, same as you cant make competitive players non-competitive. No rules from GW can ever fix that mentality or that rift between those two groups.

 MWHistorian wrote:

Rules wont fix the problems you decide, you cant make non-competitive players competitive, same as you cant make competitive players non-competitive. No rules from GW can ever fix that mentality or that rift between those two groups.

And yet other games don't have nearly such a huge divide as 40k. Hmm... could it be the rules? It's getting to the point where there's no middle ground. It's like polarizing American politics.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

In every competitive game every that has rules, there will always be those who try to bend them so far as to make the rules absurd and unfun to compete against. Thats not a rules problem, thats a player problem.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Other games dont have as huge of divide as other games arent as huge as this 30 year old game.

 unmercifulconker wrote:
If the rules really are how they stand and how we fear then there is no point even buying the rulebook since there will be so many complaints and reduced sales that 8th edition will be right around the corner.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

Rules wont fix the problems you decide, you cant make non-competitive players competitive, same as you cant make competitive players non-competitive. No rules from GW can ever fix that mentality or that rift between those two groups.

And yet other games don't have nearly such a huge divide as 40k. Hmm... could it be the rules? It's getting to the point where there's no middle ground. It's like polarizing American politics.

Considering people are freaking out about a paragraph in White Dwarf, would be nice to see the actual Unbound rules before declaring the game dead for what...the 7th time?

Other games dont have as huge of divide as other games arent as huge as this 30 year old game. People will adapt, they always do, and always have. Sure some will leave, but frothing at the mouth based on....4 columns of text in a WD. Right...

 MWHistorian wrote:
Well, I think if someone said "Here's my banshee spam list!" The reaction would be laughter, not frothing.
But let's go back to my example of the terminator army against my SOB army. My SOB army is pretty dang I think. I have two dominions and a squad of Seraphim led by St. Celestine. I had had all three squads DS and scout in on the enemy's back field on the same turn. My dominions fired at terminators and nurgle bikers with melta guns. The terminators lost one guy thanks to MoT invul. The nurgle bikers were just insanely durable. His terminators and bikers proceeded to butcher all three of my squads, including Celestine simply because he was in that sweet spot where I didn't have volume of fire or the uber weapons to kill him.
I did win the game but those few units of his were almost unstoppable.
If I were faced with a whole army of terminators, I'd refuse because my army isn't equipped to deal with that. It also isn't equipped to deal with an air force of any kind or a full leman Russ list. None of those are riptide spam cheese levels and could be quite "fluffy." But without the tools I simply can't compete. No one's being TFG or WAAC, just playing by the rules.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

Rules wont fix the problems you decide, you cant make non-competitive players competitive, same as you cant make competitive players non-competitive. No rules from GW can ever fix that mentality or that rift between those two groups.

And yet other games don't have nearly such a huge divide as 40k. Hmm... could it be the rules? It's getting to the point where there's no middle ground. It's like polarizing American politics.

Considering people are freaking out about a paragraph in White Dwarf, would be nice to see the actual Unbound rules before declaring the game dead for what...the 7th time?

Other games dont have as huge of divide as other games arent as huge as this 30 year old game. People will adapt, they always do, and always have. Sure some will leave, but frothing at the mouth based on....4 columns of text in a WD. Right...

Again, you fail to understand the argument. This is the latest in a pattern for GW. It's a pattern that ignores the fan base, throws good rules to the curb, and is an obvious ploy just to get people to buy more stuff because as it says on record, buying GW crap is THE HOBBY.
It's the latest in the pattern that just shoves more "buy the big stuff" at the gamer as possible. Sure, maybe the lists that follow the FOC will get bonuses that more than compensate for it, but I doubt it. Either way one will over power the other because it's been shown repetitively ad nauseum that GW doesn't know how to balance things.
So it its just a few paragraphs from WD, its a multi-year trend of GW getting worse and worse with no change to that pattern in sight. So yes, some people have reason to be negative.

 Accolade wrote:
If Privateer Press did the same thing with WM/H I think people would decry the changes as greedy. It's not us vs. GW because we are jealous or their success, it's us vs. GW trying to exploit the rules and force more purchases, when in reality if they just took steps to address customer concerns, people would buy more of their stuff anyway!

 techsoldaten wrote:

The way this situation resolved itself, btw, was that TFG stopped playing CSMs. He felt like no one could actually beat him and he was the best of the best with that army. He plays Tyranids now and has like 160 models in his standard army. His lists are only slightly less annoying, he still drags out each phase of the game and moves everything into cover on each turn. He wins by wearing out the other player moreso than through great victories. He literally threatens to pull his CSMs back out throughout games, he constantly argues about the rules even when he knows he's wrong, he tells other players they don't know what they are doing. Like, I can't win against his Tyranids, I can barely concentrate on a plan when it's over 30 minutes to get past his turn one and with all the chatter.

Imagine a world where every other player is just like him. It really concerns me to think this is what unbound is leading to.